Israel Launches ‘Cyber Iron Dome’ to Protect its Electrical Grid

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The Israel Electric Company (IEC) is concerned about protection of the Jewish nation’s electrical grid. The recent 50 day summer 2014 war with Hamas in Gaza witnessed more than 2,300 rockets reining death and destruction on Central and Southern Israel. Several hundred rockets headed towards major population centers in the State of Israel were detected and literally knocked from the skies by the Iron Dome system batteries. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad rockets over the period from 2006 to 2014 have targeted the Rutenberg Power Plant of the IEC in Ashkelon. The power plant has also been subject to periodic outages. The vulnerability to physical attack was illustrated by Gaza’s sole power plant destroyed during the conflict.

Physical threats are only one aspect. There are also Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) and cyber attacks. Cyber attacks on critical operating systems, such as Siemens’ SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) are something that Israel may know about. There was the development of the Stuxnet malware that disrupted Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. Israel to this day remains silent about any involvement in the malware’s development.  Israel’s electrical network vulnerabilities led the IEC to partner with the Israeli firm of mPrest that had developed the critical sensor and detection software system at the core of the Iron Dome System. The objective was to develop a means of intercepting and deterring cyber threats to the national grid.  On Tuesday, the Information Grid (IG) system was unveiled at a Homeland Security Conference in Tel Aviv.

The Times of Israel, Start Up-Israel technology publication reported this ground breaking development; Israel presents an ‘Iron Dome’ for ‘electricity terror’. Eugene Kaspersky of the eponymous cyber protection concern that discovered Stuxnet recently commented:

“We’ve seen numerous cases of attacks on industrial infrastructure – Stuxnet was far from the only one,” said Kaspersky. “There is an international army consisting of tens of thousands of engineers out there developing SCADA malware. One day, a terrorist organization is going to get the bright idea to acquire one of these tools and deploy it to make their ideological point. If it hasn’t happened yet, it’s just a matter of time until it does.”

Because of the terrorist threat to Israel’s national grid, the IEC reached out to mPrest to develop a solution. Start Up –Israel described the process and what IG does:

IEC partnered with a subsidiary of mPrest Systems, called mPrest Electric, which was a member of the IEC’s KARAT Incubator. Drawing on the tech used by mPrest to design and operate Iron Dome, the companies designed the Information Grid, which checks the flow of electricity to ensure that lines are not overloaded, and that electricity “viruses” — attacks on specific sections of the grid – don’t spread, allowing administrators to quickly identify suspicious activity and isolate it.

The heart of IG is:

a command and control system similar to the one that controls Iron Dome. When an attack is detected – if a SCADA system that is controlling electrical flow starts acting “funny,” for example – the Grid will notice it right away, and it will automatically shut off connections to the substation or segment of the system that has been compromised, preventing further damage and allowing security personnel to better track the source of the attack.

The system allows integration and control in real-time of thousands of sensors, which are installed at about 300 different sites in Israel. The sensors measure a wide variety of data, which flows into the Grid and is analyzed in real time. The Grid is based on a unique architecture which allows the integration of an infinite number of systems and assets, with no limitation on the number of links or data, said the IEC, and it can also handle additional information from a wide variety of legacy programs that measure and record data.

Here in the US we had investigative articles by the Wall Street Journal about a purported terrorist attack against the Metcalf substation of Pacific Gas and Electric in Silicon Valley. Aroused by the Metcalf substation attack, Jon Wellinghoff ,the former head of the Federal  Energy  Regulation Commission (FERC),   directed that   simulation studies  of  possible attacks be made  at key substations in the national grid. Those simulations of the national grid alarmingly revealed that terrorist attacks at just 9 strategically located substations in the US could collapse the entire grid.   The Congress has also been concerned about the vulnerability of the national grid arising from a Commission that released a report in 2006 about how to protect the electrical infrastructure from both natural and man-made EMP attacks.  That  led to development of   H.R. 2417 SHIELD (Secure High-voltage Infrastructure for Electricity from Lethal Damage Act)  and  H.R. 5026 GRID  (Grid Reliability and Infrastructure Defense Act) -proposals to harden the nation’s electrical system and protect the infrastructure from EMP, physical and cyber attacks.  Neither of these legislative proposals has progressed due to  opposition by the US electrical power industry because of alleged significant additional investment to achieve security. We wrote in a March 2014 Iconoclast post:

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), the principal electric utility standard setting organization, has opposed passage of the SHIELD Act calling the network “resilient”.  Au contraire says an official of Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) cited by the WSJ: “The breadth and depth of the attack was unprecedented” in the U.S., said Rich Lordan, senior technical executive. “The motivation”, he said, “appears to be preparation for an act of war.”  When we checked the websites of the  House Energy and Commerce Committee  Chairman  Fred Upton (R-MI ) and  Energy and Power Subcommittee Chairman Ed Whitfield (R-KY) their major concerns  were the vulnerability of the grid to cyber attack.

The  joint IEC-mPrest  Information Grid cyber protection  development should be of interest to  FERC, NERC and EPRI given  Congressional concerns over the vulnerability  of the  national  grid to terrorists, EMP  and cyber threats.

This latest display of Israeli high tech ingenuity should raise interest in protecting currently vulnerable US, EU and other electrical grids.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on the New English Review. The featured image of a hacker is by Dreamstime.

Google, Facebook and the NSA establish ‘listening posts’ on my computer — you may be next!

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I just entered my computer and used the CMD prompt to see if anyone had hacked my trusty desk top. Surprise, well not really, I found six established listening posts on my trusty liberal bashing Collectivist crushing operations center in my bunker in Navarre.

Now don’t get me wrong its okay to spy, like on the Russians the Chinese and the North Koreans, but hanging out in my computer really angers me. First of all I am an American and second of all this is the United States and third of all where’s the warrant?

So I called up the PID’s and Internet Protocol Addresses (ISP) of the “Established files” in my computers operating center and ran a check.

I find the listening post (1) is my router… that’s okay because I set that up.

But… listening post (2) has an ISP address of 173.252.102.24. I traced this to Facebook headquarters in California.
And… listening post (3) has an ISP address of 173.194.37.78. I traced this to Google headquarters.
And… listening post (4) has a foreign ISP address of 31.13.65.33. This I traced to Facebook headquarters in Ireland.

Just so you know. I wanted to make it much easier for you to look into my computer so I used my iPhone and took a screen shot of you guys watching me and me now watching you. Cheers. See the below picture.

geoff ross screen shot

For a larger view click on the image.

To my patriot friends reading this. If you look carefully at the picture above… where you see an established file this is a potentially hacked file and or listening post for others to see what web sites you visit. These files maybe used to get passwords or other information from your computer.

Now everyone knows…smile…don’t forget to vote today. And you boys at Google…don’t be giving my personal data to the government…its illegal and unconstitutional. Read the 4th Amendment.

I sent this column to: The NSA, NSA SELinux Team the math wizards at the NSA (I know I got your e mail address) hey spies like us right?, Google, Facebook, CIA Langley and Fox News New York.

RELATED ARTICLE: UK spy chief: Facebook, Twitter “command and control networks” for jihadis

UPDATE NOVEMBER 6, 2014.

The listening posts set up on my computer have mysteriously vanished after I sent out my public email disclosing their presence to the NSA, FACEBOOK and GOOGLE. POOF they are gone. Imagine that. I wonder if the NSA got irritated that I outed them publicly. Well you know I am not just a pretty face. I did send them a nasty EXE file to play with buried in a covert file. My day job in the Navy did sometimes include programming computers.

Anyway if you want to check your compute for hackers like I did go to the START button. Click on the box search programs and files. Type in CMD. Then click on the created Icon CMD and you will be taken to a black screen box.

You will see C:\user\ and the name given to your system. Type in netstat -ano and click enter. If you see any files listed that say ESTABLISHED these are potentially hacked files and or listening posts set up by outside users to spy on your activities. IE websites you visit. If you have a router you will have an established file. Look up the ISP addresses listed by any ESTABLISHED files and google search them. This will tell you who the culprit it spying on you.

I can tell you how to remove these ESTABLISHED files but its better you contact a computer person in your area and get them looked at and removed.

If you want to remove a virus from your computer go to START button. Go to the search programs and files box. Type in %temp%. This will create an icon called TEMP. Click on it. Open this file and delete all files that end in .TEMP. This will kill 99% of all viruses in your computer. Empty this trash from the recycle bin on your main screen. Your good to go.

Fighting Social Media Jihad: An Interview with Joseph Shahda

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The chilling constellation of lone wolf attacks by self-actualized domestic Jihadis in Canada and the US present a dilemma for national counterterrorism and intelligence echelons in both countries. How best to deny access to provocative social media effectively used by foreign terrorist groups to inspire and arouse deadly acts by these isolated individuals? These individuals are not directly associated with terrorist groups, but may be exercising their right to free speech under our First Amendment. In a Fox News “Brett Baier Special Report” panel discussion, Jonah Goldberg, Senior Editor at National Review On-line, referred to it as “crowd sourcing terrorism.”

isis-brand-goes-global-marketing-jihad-allah-islam-terrorists-muslimsThese foreign terrorist groups, whether Hezbollah, Hamas, and, most prominently, the Islamic State (ISIS) have found Facebook, Twitter and Instagram effective means of virally broadcasting extremist Islamic theocratic doctrine – a fundamentalist doctrine anchored in the Qur’anic canon that has attracted thousands of converts and fighters to their Salafist Jihadist cause to implement Sharia, Islamic law. Western multi-cultural policies and political correctness confound the ability to rein in the most egregious of terrorist social media. Vice News in a July 2014 report drew attention to ISIS’ spectacular and professionally executed utilization of social media, ISIS Has a Really Slick and Sophisticated Media Department:

In addition to being one of the most brutal militant groups currently fighting in the Middle East, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) might also have the most elaborate public relations strategy.

In addition to the blatant propaganda vibe, the videos have strikingly high production quality — they are shot in HD and include sophisticated graphics and logos. Most of the content is in English, suggesting that they are specifically designed as a recruitment tool for Western audiences.

One Mujatweet video shows smiling ISIS members handing out candy and ice cream to cheering children; others include images of militants fighting in Syria set to a song extolling the group’s virtues.

All of these videos are distributed by Al Hayat Media Center, the new media arm for ISIS that was established in May, 2014. It is unclear exactly who is behind Al Hayat, but it is thought to be an initiative of Abu Talha Al Almani, a former German rapper also known as Deso Dogg, who left Europe to fight alongside ISIS in Syria, according to MEMRI.

[…]

Almani explained his motivation for joining ISIS in one video, saying, “That’s why I pledged allegiance [to ISIS], in order to help the brothers and sisters of ISIS… and teach them how to make Da’wa [preach] to people who have long lived in humiliation and do not know the laws of Allah.”

To understand the dimensions of this phenomenon of beguiling propaganda preying on receptive adherents in the West, we turned to Joseph Shahda. Shahda is an American Lebanese and Orthodox Christian who has spent the last seven years fighting Arabic language internet jihad. We profiled him in one of our earliest New English Review articles, “Fighting Internet Jihad” (Nov. 2007). We collaborated with Shahda in facilitating information on Internet Service providers used by AQ and other terrorist groups for former US Senator Joseph Lieberman and his staff at the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. The Senator and his Committee were endeavoring to enlist the cooperation of Google YouTube to take down Al Qaeda training videos, despite the objections of the company, the ACLU and First Amendment protected speech proponents, including the New York Times. See our June 2008, NER article, “Is Google An Enabler Of Terrorists?” Lieberman, as we noted in the article, presciently responded to a New York Times editorial in a Letter entitled: “Terror and the Internet” published on March 28, 2008:

The intelligence community, moreover, sounded the alarm about proliferation of radical Islamist sites in a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate: warning that, even absent guidance from established terror organizations, the Internet enables “alienated people to find and connect with one another, justify and intensify their anger, and mobilize resources to attack.”

What is ludicrous is the claim that YouTube has been pressured to pull down videos just because I don’t like them. Al Qaeda and its affiliates are engaged in a wartime communications strategy to recruit, amass funds and inspire savage attacks against American troops and civilians. Their Internet videos are branded with logos, authenticating them as enemy communications. They are patent incitements to violence, not First Amendment-protected speech. And they fall outside Google’s own stated guidelines for content.

The peril here is not to legitimate dissent but to our fundamental right of self-defense. For those of us in government, protecting Americans is the highest responsibility. Asking private parties operating public communications systems to assist that effort is common sense.

Against this background we interviewed Shahda.

Jerry Gordon

Jerry Gordon:  Joseph Shahda, thank you for consenting to this interview.

Joseph Shahda

Joseph Shahda:  Thank you for inviting me.

Jerry Gordon:  How long have you been monitoring Arabic language terrorist and social media on the internet and what have been some important findings?

Joseph Shahda:  I have been monitoring Arabic language terrorist websites and their social media since 2007. The most important findings are that they have used these websites and social media to propagate their terrorist ideology, to widen their support base, to recruit more terrorists to their ranks, and to teach the new recruits how to build bombs, explosives, and other terrorist activities using the websites/social media as their virtual training camps.

Gordon:  What motivates you to continue as a private individual in the effort to identify terrorist exploitation of the internet and social media?

Shahda:  It is my duty as an American to help my country during this long and hard war on terror. I believe that it is very important to monitor the terrorist activities on the internet and better yet shut their websites/social media accounts to prevent the spreading of propaganda, recruitment, and training.

Gordon:  What has changed over the past decade in the use of the Internet by terrorist Groups, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Islamic State?

Shahda:  They are getting more sophisticated and savvy in using the internet to achieve many of their goals. They moved from simple release of media statements, to creating forums with hundreds of thousands of subscribers, to creating hundreds of Facebook pages, and now creating thousands of twitter accounts for instant propaganda.

Gordon:  The Islamic State or ISIS has run a number of graphic social media campaigns that have branded it. How successful has that been in viral messaging and recruitment?

Shahda:  I believe it has been very successful in achieving its desire goal.

Gordon:  Can you provide us with some specific examples of ISIS’s social media successes?

Shahda:  Take for example any propaganda or act of terrorism video created by ISIS terrorists. Their followers can spread such a video within minutes and like a wildfire on Facebook and more so on.

Even their non followers and enemies help them indirectly by retweeting their terrorist propaganda.

Gordon:  Has Facebook, Twitter and Instagram been able to knock off ISIS and other terrorist group accounts? If not, what are hurdles these social media face?

Shahda:  They have done so but they keep creating more and more accounts. Some compare it to whack a mole.

Gordon:  Given your experience in monitoring websites, chat rooms and now social media, how difficult is it to monitor and prevent abuses by terrorist groups?

Shahda:  It is difficult because it requires considerable dedicated resources. Monitoring chat rooms is easier because there are probably dozens of them fully dedicated for terrorist activities. However it gets much more difficult with Facebook and even more so with Twitter where thousands of accounts can be created in very short period of time and quickly spread propaganda and other terrorist activities.

Gordon:  The recent attacks by isolated Islamic extremists in Canada and the US are evidence of the extensive use by the perpetrators of social media resonating Islamic doctrinal hatred and calls to jihad. Is there any way that counterterrorism and homeland security echelons can identify and effectively monitor such potential cases?

Shahda:  The “Lone Wolf” terrorists are hard to track down as many of them will be using proxy servers such as TOR to hide their actual IP addresses and avoid being detected by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. To track them down requires long term monitoring and most importantly a mistake on the part of the Lone Wolf terrorist where he may give a clue of his whereabouts or his identity. However it is worth noting that the terrorist who attacked the Canadian parliament was not this unknown lone wolf as the Canadian government was very aware of his terrorist inclinations.

Gordon:  How do the US First Amendment guarantees of free and protected speech impede surveillance and takedown of terrorists’ social media platforms?

Shahda:  The eternal debate of what constitutes free speech is still going on. Is incitement to violence against the United States and Americans considered freedom of speech? Is teaching people how to make bombs, explosives, IED’s, kidnapping, and other acts of violence considered freedom of speech? In my opinion absolutely not for all of the above. These types of terrorist activities must never be accepted as freedom of speech.

Gordon:  Do you believe that US counterterrorism and intelligence echelons have the requisite linguistic resources to monitor terrorist social media, and, if not, what should they be doing to obtain them?

Shahda:  I cannot answer this question as I do not know what resources that our government has in this field.  However, I hope that we do have enough because as I said before this is very long and hard war against Islamic terrorism and requires a lot of resources, patience, fortitude, and strong will to defeat this enemy.

Gordon:  How could the US government make more effective use of private individuals like you and others in this important effort to keep tabs on emerging jihad threats on social media?

Shahda:  I am ready to help anytime if and when they ask me to do so. Our bravest troops are fighting and dying in foreign lands to protect our freedom and our way of life. The least that I can do is to help in monitoring terrorist activities on the internet from the comfort of my living room.

Gordon:  Joseph Shahda, thank you for this thought provoking and timely interview.

Shahda:  You’re welcome.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. The featured photo is courtesy of Al Jazeera and the insert photo of Joseph Shahda courtesy of the New York Times. Also see Jerry Gordon’s collection of interviews, The West Speaks.

“PreCog Audience” – Software that is poised to hand control of the U.S. Senate to Republicans

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ARLINGTON, Va., PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The data and analytics firm Evolving Strategies, in concert with the largest campaign technology firm in the world, Aristotle, have developed a new technology – the “PreCog Audience” – that is poised to hand control of the Senate to Republicans.

The PreCog Audience (PcA) consists of the voters in the “Big 4” Senate states that should be targeted because these voters will be persuaded by a specific message – and that will change their vote. The PcA includes each and every one of the more than 13 million voters in Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, and North Carolina that have been determined — right now, in advance — who will be persuaded.

“Is it a crystal ball? It’s as close as we can get,” said Adam Schaeffer, Director of Research at Evolving Strategies. “Is it a game-changing weapon for the Right this election season.”

“We are making available to Republican campaigns an exclusive product that no one else is offering. It has the potential to push Republican candidates to victory in the final weeks of this election cycle because you can now be certain your efforts are hitting the right voters with the right message. It’s political precognition.”

“Evolving Strategies now has access to our 190+ million records, including 4,000 election boards, county clerks and voter registrars, as well as party affiliation, race, exact age, vote history and school board districts,” said Aristotle CEO John Aristotle Phillips. “This is very powerful information, and we are honored to be working with such an innovative company.”

Background on PreCog Audience:

The team of PhDs and data scientists at Evolving Strategies utilized bleeding-edge, proprietary machine-learning techniques to analyze data from over 600,000 voters across the Big 4 Senate states involved in the largest known experiment in the history of political campaigning on the Right — ultimately predicting how a message will shift an individual voter’s support before it’s been delivered.

The PreCog Audience is the easy-to-use product resulting from this complicated work – an audience composed of all the individual voters needed to win an election.

Evolving Strategies will only offer access to the PreCog Audience to political operatives and organizations on the Right.

Evolving Strategies is now taking a limited number of pre-orders for the PreCog Audience. In addition to direct sales through Evolving Strategies, Aristotle, with more than 2,000 political clients throughout the world, will offer these audience lists through their platform as a super-premium item, exclusively to conservative operatives and organizations.

Evolving Strategies is a data and analytics firm dedicated to understanding human behavior through the creative application of randomized-controlled experiments.

Let’s Get Serious About Radical Islam

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In a nationally televised speech on Wednesday, September 10, Barack Obama announced a four-part plan for dealing with the terrorist organization, ISIS. Here are the four parts of his plan:

  • A systematic campaign of airstrikes against terrorists.
  • Increased support for forces fighting terrorists on the ground.
  • Draw on substantial counterterrorism capabilities to prevent ISIS attacks. And finally,
  • Provide humanitarian assistance to civilians who’ve been displaced by ISIS terrorism.

Does his plan have any chance of success? No.

Air-power alone will not defeat ISIS. To defeat ISIS it will be necessary to take and hold ground and to flush the 30,000 or 40,000 jihadists out of the cities and towns where they hide among women and children. To date, it is only the Kurds who have expressed a willingness to put troops on the ground. We are told that only 5% of the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims are radicalized, but that comes to 70 million radicalized jihadists. To put that into perspective, during World War II the combined uniformed forces of Germany, Japan, and Italy totaled only 34.1 million.

Would Obama have gone before the TV cameras to announce his plan unless something or someone forced his hand? No, this is a man who actually said in his speech that “ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) is not Islamic.” But just as the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 changed Americans from pacifists to war hawks, literally overnight, the public beheading of two American journalists and a British aid worker has had exactly the same effect. But, while revenge is sweet and it might make us feel good to see a bit of ISIS blood spilled on the desert sands, the Obama plan will accomplish nothing more than to infuriate more and more young Muslims, driving them into the welcoming arms of al-Baghdadi and his army of lunatics.

So how do we attack the problem? First, while we’re busily engaged in bombing individual cars and trucks with $110,000 Hellfire missiles, just to make us feel as if we’re doing something to eradicate ISIS, we must pursue a strategic two-pronged non-military effort to, a) Separate the good Muslims from the bad by prosecuting radical Islamists here at home, and b) Use whatever means we have at our disposal to change the hearts and minds of Muslims around the world.

violentislam-150x150Islam is not a religion, as we understand the term. Rather it is a complete political, judicial, economic, military, and cultural system, masquerading as a religion. Its adherents refuse to assimilate into host country cultures, insisting that they be allowed to exist as an independent entity, not subject to the laws of their host nations. In order to accomplish their ends, they regularly preach the overthrow of their host governments, by violence if necessary.

Accordingly, we must resolve that, “What is sauce for the (Communist) goose is sauce for the (Islamic) gander.” In order to neutralize Islam’s cultural institutions within our country, we must do as I have previously suggested: We must tailor the language of Section 2 of the Communist Control Act of 1954… a law that has not been struck down by the Supreme Court and which is still on the books… to read as follows:

“The American people are determined to eliminate from their midst organizations which, purporting to be ‘religious,’ in the accepted sense of that term, are conspirators dedicated to the destruction of our form of government by force and violence…

“The Congress hereby finds and declares that Islam, although purportedly a religious sect, is in fact an instrumentality of a foreign conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States. It constitutes an authoritarian dictatorship within a republic, demanding for itself the rights and privileges accorded to individuals of other religious denominations, but denying to all others the freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution…

“As a segment of the U.S. population, Islam is relatively small, numerically, and gives scant indication of its capacity ever to attain its ends by lawful means. The peril inherent in the existence of Islam arises not from its numbers, but from its failure to acknowledge any limitation as to the nature of its activities, and its dedication to the proposition that the present system of government of the United States ultimately must be brought to ruin by any available means, including resort to force and violence. Holding that doctrine, its role as the agency of a hostile foreign power renders its existence a clear and present danger to the security of the United States. It is the means whereby individuals are seduced into the service of Islam, trained to do its bidding, and directed and controlled in the conspiratorial performance of their revolutionary services. Therefore, the organization known as Islam shall be outlawed in the United States.”

behead those who insult islam photoWith that statute on the books we can make it very uncomfortable for radical Islamists. We can make their presence in our country so unpleasant that they will long for a return to whatever hellhole they and their predecessors crawled out of. With eyes and ears planted in every mosque and every Muslim cultural center in America, radical Imams such as the late Anwar al-Awlaki could be readily identified and FBI agents could quickly make arrests.

And finally, we Americans have always prided ourselves on our ingenuity. Whatever problems we’ve confronted, we have found ways to solve them. So let’s use that ingenuity to change, to the extent possible, the hearts and minds of Muslims around the world. Consider this example: I suggest that we conduct a major SOFTWAR campaign utilizing a photographic projection technique called “holography,” the creation of images that appear to be three dimensional, when in fact they are only images created by focused beams of laser light.

We already have made-to-order audiences: hundreds of jihadists and other soldiers of the faith, warehoused in various CIA black sites, as well as prison compounds in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. The only thing missing is the Prophet Mohammed, himself.

Scientists have been working since 1947 to perfect 3-dimensional holographic imaging, but the greatest advances in the art were made by physicist Lloyd Cross in 1972. Cross developed the integral hologram by combining white light transmission holography with conventional cinematography to produce lifelike moving 3-dimensional images. It gives special effects technicians the ability to produce the Prophet Mohammed, in three dimensions and in living color, and we can make him deliver any message we want, to any audience we assemble.

Imagine the scene in the Pulacharke Prison in Afghanistan, a thousand-year-old stone structure the size of a small gymnasium, filled with radical Muslim clerics and an assortment of al Qaeda and Taliban faithful. And imagine that one moonless night, at midnight, the Prophet Mohammed appears to the sleeping throng, his image floating in mid-air, high in a corner of the room, some fifteen or twenty feet above the floor.

In a loud booming voice, with a slight echo chamber quality, the Prophet would awaken the terrified throng. His reason for returning, he would say, is to tell the radical Islamists that they have misinterpreted his teachings and that he looks with great disfavor upon the radical Islamic interpretation of the Quran. He would declare that Islamic jihad is a great sin, it is Hirabah (prohibited war against society), and that ISIS leader Bakr al Baghdadi is the leader of the Mufsidoon (evil-doers condemned by the Koran). He would tell them that all those who follow the evil ways of ISIS and the Taliban will suffer Jahannam (eternal hellfire) unless they repent.

With the flick of a switch he would be gone, leaving his listeners trembling in terror at what they had just witnessed. Could the “second coming of Mohammed” be staged in such a way that the faithful would be left with no doubt that they’d actually seen the Prophet and heard his words? Of course. If the “second coming” were properly planned and executed, we could even tell those who witnessed our artful hoax what we’d done and they’d never believe us. With the average jihadi having the intellectual capacity of an angry chimpanzee, it would be impossible to convince such primitive minds that they had not actually seen the Prophet.

What I suggest may sound a bit “off the wall,” but is it? There is nothing new about the use of the elaborate hoax as an instrument of war. World War II is replete with such stories. Given the computerized advances in cinematic special effects, today’s special effects technicians could produce absolute miracles. And while it may not be kosher to mess around with someone else’s religion, in the present circumstance we are dealing with religious fanatics whose only goal in life is to kill us all, and for no other reason than that we exist. Our lives, and the lives of our children and grandchildren, hang in the balance. Drastic measures are called for.

Unlike soldiers of civilized cultures, jihadists cannot be captured, imprisoned, and sent off to “reeducation” camps… they can only be killed. And since we can’t begin to think of killing 70 million jihadists, it’s time we got serious about finding more creative ways of defeating the most barbaric enemy in all of recorded history.

Thomas Friedman put it best in a September 13 editorial in the New York Times. He wrote, “Our staying power is ambiguous, our enemy is barbarous, our regional allies are duplicitous, our European allies are feckless, and the Iraqis and Syrians we’re trying to help are fractious. There is not a straight shooter in the bunch. Other than that, it’s just like D-Day.”

RELATED ARTICLE: Army’s Combat Leaders Prepare for New War – Military.com

Sending Money Home: Technology or Bureaucracy? by Iain Murray

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Remittances are helping poor people globally, but regulators loom.

Some of the world’s poorest people depend on the money they receive from relatives working in developed countries. In fact, this money dwarfs the world’s official foreign aid budget, and the gap is increasing.

In 2011, total private flows of aid totaled $680 billion—almost five times the $138 billion official figure. As I noted in 2005, “the future of aid to developing countries is private.”

This increase in private aid is great news for all concerned. Except, perhaps, for bureaucrats, who are loath to let good deeds go unpunished. World Bank and United Nations bean counters are denouncing remittance transfer fees as exploitative. The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has issued a rule to crack down on supposed fraud and exploitation affecting the existing remittance-transfer infrastructure. Its most important provision is the right to cancel a money transfer within 30 minutes of its being initiated. Proposals to cap the fee charged by remittance firms have also been agreed to internationally.

Critics claim that high transfer fees are the result of a so-called market failure. Yet, markets in remittances are frequently overregulated. Many African governments have exclusive deals with money transfer companies, which operate as national monopolies, free from competitive discipline. And there are other regulatory pitfalls that drive up prices. A Western Union spokesman told The Guardian: 

Our pricing varies between countries depending on a number of factors, such as consumer protection costs, local remittance taxes, market distribution, regulatory structure, volume, currency volatility and other market efficiencies. These factors can impact the fees and foreign exchange rates offered by corridor and service type.

All this suggests the remittance market needs less regulation. Proper competition, lower taxes, less restrictive “consumer protection” measures (which quickly become outdated), and less red tape in general would all likely increase the flow of funds between individuals.

Such a solution would be inconceivable for global bureaucrats. Indeed, their house organ, The New York Times, last week recommended that the industry should be not only nationalized, but internationalized, with the World Bank taking on the role of remittance service provider, a role the Times actually described as “critical”:

The World Bank could pool deposits from banks and nonbank money transfer agents and parcel them to recipient banks, using its formidable certification protocols to verify that the money is coming from and going to legitimate parties. Such pooling could also reduce exchange fees, a big cost to migrants. Equally important, the World Bank could use its relationships with regulators around the world to enhance the remittance system’s integrity.

Technology is already solving many of the problems faced by the money transfer industry, making the industry obsolete in the process. For example, in the central Asian republic Kyrgyzstan, which relies heavily on remittances—accounting for 31 percent of its GDP, mostly from within the former Soviet Union—an Italian entrepreneur named Emanuele Costa is able to promote bitcoin as an alternative to the expensive, heavily regulated money transfer firms. 

Costa can do this because Kyrgyzstan is notably less oppressive and more free-market-oriented than its neighbors, and it has much less regulation than is typical in the area. He regularly hosts meetups to explain the currency to potential recipients and has installed a bitcoin ATM at a pizzeria (which, as Eurasianet notes, has been “bombarded with calls” since it publicized its existence).

In Kenya, meanwhile, a bitcoin startup called BitPesa offers money transfers “twice as fast and 75% cheaper” than traditional competitors. Kenya is an especially interesting place for this innovation to happen, as it was the scene of a “cell phone revolution” that allowed its telecommunications market to work around a serious case of government failure. As a result, most Kenyans now use a form of mobile wallet on their cell phones.

The potential for bitcoin to revolutionize the global remittance industry is hard to overstate. It largely cuts out the middleman, reducing the fees and charges some view as exploitative. Converting to local currency would be the most significant charge for most users. Bitcoin facilitates the establishment of trust through its “blockchain” public ledger, potentially reducing fraudulent transfers to near zero (although there is always the chance of someone stealing a wallet key). Taxes, at the moment, are minimal. 

For these reasons, bitcoin represents the best hope to ensure that all of the $680 billion in remittances goes to the people who need it. That might be why in America, bitcoin is most popular among Hispanics, who send more money abroad than any other group.

Yet, roadblocks remain. If Kyrgyzstan joins Moscow’s customs union as expected, bitcoin’s days may be numbered there, as Russian officials have taken a dim view of anonymous payment vehicles. Meanwhile, in the UK, where many Kenyan remittance senders live and work, banks are wary of taking bitcoin businesses on as clients. As BitPesa’s founder told The Guardian:

Most UK banks won’t let Bitcoin businesses open bank accounts. These businesses want to be licensed, but UK banks shy away, just like Barclays cut Somalia off the map. 

British banks are highly regulated and probably fearful of what regulators might do to them if they did business with companies that present “reputational risk”—as defined by regulators, of course.

In the United States, the CFPB rule mentioned above could threaten to make bitcoin illegal for remittance purposes. The average time for a Bitcoin transaction to go through is around eight minutes, and reversing a transaction is impossible unless an escrow service is used. It is possible that the rule may not apply to a decentralized network like bitcoin, but in its short existence, the CFPB has not become known for reading its powers narrowly.

Regulators could wind up killing off the solution to problems created by, well, regulators. If they are serious about reducing costs and decreasing the potential for fraud in remittances, they will stand aside and let bitcoin develop in this role. If the choice is between a distributed, autonomous cryptocurrency network approved by the people who need the remittances most, or a combination of policies approved by The New York Times, the World Bank, and international regulators, Public Choice economics suggests that the technological option faces a long struggle ahead.

ABOUT IAIN MURRAY

Iain Murray is vice president at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is courtesy of FEE and Shutterstock.

Qatar’s Cyberwarfare Support of Hamas in the War with Israel

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There is more behind Israeli Prime Minister’s objection to Qatar as a go between with the Administration seeking to gain leverage with Hamas for the current 72 hour truce. Qatar’s contribution to Hamas goes beyond the hundreds of millions of dollars diverted to build the terror tunnels. It also encompasses a hitherto unrevealed cyberwarfare effort by Qatar to design and build a high tech system to automatically launch rockets and missiles against Israeli civilians and IDF forces. Start-Up Israel, a publication of The Times of Israel, had an article about the Qatari high tech role in Hamas’ war with Israel  in today’s edition authored by journalist David Shamah, “Qatari tech helps Hamas in tunnels, rockets: Expert”.

Here are some jarring excerpts:

Though many Israelis underestimate its capabilities, Hamas actually has sophisticated computer and networking resources in terror tunnels to detect the presence of IDF troops and to automatically fire rockets and missiles at Israeli targets — and a rich sponsor is helping them.

It is Gulf energy powerhouse Qatar, says Aviad Dadon of Israeli cyber-security firm AdoreGroup. “The Qataris have invested hundreds of millions in both defensive and offensive cyber capabilities,” said Dadon. “We have sourced 70% of the cyber-attacks on Israeli government sites in recent weeks to IP addresses associated with Qatar.”
[…]

Not only is Qatar footing the bill, it also trained Hamas terrorists how to use sophisticated equipment and systems to manage its extensive terror tunnel system, as well, systems to fire rockets at Israel using automatic, timed launching systems.

“Qatar looks at this war between Israel and Hamas as a proving ground,” said Dadon, a senior cyber-security adviser at several Israeli government ministries. “They are taking lessons from the performance of their cyber-equipment and will improve them even further for the next war, which will be even more cyber-oriented than this one.”

According to Dadon, Hamas has embedded sophisticated network systems inside its terror tunnels, giving operatives in command and control centers the ability to monitor events in any of the tunnels. Using sensors and other networked equipment, terrorists can quickly be notified if an IDF unit is advancing in a tunnel, allowing them to disperse quickly — and allowing the command and control staff to set off explosives when soldiers approach a booby trap.

[…]

Besides the assistance Qatar gives Hamas, hackers hired by the Gulf kingdom have been busy hitting Israeli government and infrastructure sites, trying to disrupt the operations of electricity, water, and other critical systems, said Dadon. “They are at the top of the (target) pyramid in the use of cyber-technology for terrorist purposes,” he said, adding that Israel has successfully defended its infrastructure with its own sophisticated cyber-security technology.

Qatar is using the Gaza war to test out systems to defend against threats from neighboring  Saudi Arabia:

While Doha is allowing Hamas to use its technology to fight Israel, it is their own cyber-security the leaders of Qatar are worried about. “For them, the war between Israel and Hamas is a proving ground to see how their investments in cyber systems have paid off,” Dadon said. Qatar is very worried that one of its Gulf rivals — specifically Saudi Arabia — will use technology to attack it, and Qatar spends a great deal of money each year on shoring up its cyber-technology.

The motivation behind the Qatari development of cyber warfare capabilities-overthrow of Saudi Arabia and support for Muslim Brotherhood:

Politics is behind Qatar’s willingness to pay for Hamas’ cyber-system. The Saudis believe that Qatar is behind efforts to unseat the Saudi royal family — using social media and the Al-Jazeera satellite channel.  Riyadh earlier this year recalled its ambassador to Doha, after he refused to pledge that it would “not interfere in others’ internal affairs.”  Eli Aviad, who formerly headed Israel’s Economic Liaison office in Qatar said that, “Israel and Hamas are a ‘playground’ for Qatar. Qatar already spends billions each year on cyber-security, and in recent years that spending has gone up substantially.” While they are primarily interested in cyber defense, Aviad said, “they are also interested in assisting their Muslim Brotherhood allies — and hence their willingness to fund the Hamas terror program”. Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The question is who in Qatar, the tiny gas-rich peninsula off Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf, are building these sophisticated cyber warfare capabilities. Qatar has only 280,000 citizens supported by nearly 2 million foreign workers, largely from South Asia and the Indonesian and Philippine archipelagoes. Have they sent their best and brightest for technical education in the West or could it be foreign contractors? The US Administration signed an $11 billion arms deal with Qatar shortly after the start of Israel’s Operation Protective Edge. We question what that arms deal may include. Watch out, Egypt.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. The featured image is of Qatar’s ruler, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani meeting Hamas ruler Ismael Haniyeh in Rafah Crossing on Gaza-Egypt border. Photo – Al Jazeera English TV.

Israel’s War with Hamas 2014: The Social Media Battle

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In the battle to win the hearts and minds of the world, the Israeli war against Hamas in Gaza has seen Psy-Ops raised to a new level of intense information overload. Through the use of operational blogs, websites, Facebook pages and Twitter accounts both antagonists have flooded the internet with graphic images, videos and propaganda endeavoring to convey messages about their war aims. They are cultivating positions that reflect real time actions on the battlefield. Israel, while punishing Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza through aerial strikes, bombardments and a massive ground incursion has justified their actions because of the rocket war on its civilian population. IDF and independent Israeli hasbarah social media operations have taken great pains to illustrate the extent to which Israel goes to warn Palestinians in Gaza of intended targets via cell phone Text messages, Tweets and even non-explosives missiles.

Israel is concerned about homes, schools, hospitals and other buildings, some of which harbor launching sites, command and control centers and armories of rockets and weapons. The discovery of a massive network of tunnels, many interlaced and excavated under the Israel- Gaza frontier, have become a prominent aspect conveyed in videos of captured facilities. Battles with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad suicide terrorists have taken a toll of IDF fallen. Hamas has produced Tweets with graphic images of alleged women and children killed due to Israeli missile and artillery attacks. Many of these images have been photo-shopped, faked or purloined from the Syrian civil war and even Hollywood films. That has led to blocking of Hamas twitter accounts. The two sides frequently accost each other in social media in a number of different languages seeking to win over the world’s opinion.

A BBC report, “Hamas and Israel step up cyber battle for hearts and minds” highlighted the Hamas military wing’s Twitter campaign:

The English-language Twitter account of Hamas’ military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, provides updates on casualties resulting from Israeli air strikes and reports on its own rocket activity, mirroring the IDF’s account.

The Qassam Brigades operate several Twitter accounts in different languages, including Arabic and Hebrew, some of which have, at times, been suspended.

Using the hashtags #GazaUnderAttack, #Gaza, #StopIsrael, and #PrayForGaza, the accounts defend the Qassam Brigades’ actions and highlight the plight of Palestinian civilians. In a tweet that appeared to be aimed at the international community, the group said Palestinian casualties were “not just numbers.”

The prominence of social media in the current IDF Operation Protective Edge first began during the eight day Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012. IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Peter Lerner spoke about the rising importance of social media in a recent Wall Street Journal article, “Israel and Hamas Take Fight to Social Media”:

“We have invested a great deal in our social media presence over the last two years.” One of the latest evolutions was the IDF’s ability to roll out battlefield video on a real time basis. In 2012, Israel set up a video war room, where staff could comb footage beamed straight from units on the battlefield. Footage is selected, edited and sent out — at times directly to journalists and at other times to IDF blogs and social-media accounts.

The IDF expanded the social media staff from less than 5 in 2010 to 40 currently, delivering information via “blogs You Tube, Twitter, and Google+ in five languages.”

The WSJ account contrasted the followings of both the IDF and Hamas:

The Israeli Defense Force’s main Twitter account (@IDFspokesperson) has more than 327,000 followers.

Hamas has been honing its own message on Twitter, while increasingly bringing responsibility for the effort in-house, instead of relying on outside activist groups to get its message across. Both the military and political arms of the organization operate accounts. The Arabic account of the military arm Qassam_Arabic@ @qassam_arabic1has attracted more than 58,000 followers.

Hamas is a foreign terrorist organization so designated by the US State Department. It has been suspended by Twitter for violations of its operating standards that prohibit “direct, specific threats of violence and prohibit people “barred from receiving services” under U.S. law from using the service.”

Watch this Wall Street Journal, Digits video on Israel Hamas War Extends to Social Media:

#IsraelUnderFire –the media savvy students at Israel’s IDC

400 tech savvy students at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Israel have been engaged in the Psy-ops social media campaign of the current conflict using the hashtag, # Israel Under Fire. The Jerusalem Post noted the student run IDC effort began during Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012:

The Student Union initiated the center two years ago under similar circumstances.

“During Operation Pillar of Defense we all worked at the Student Union and students were getting called up for reserve duty,” said Yoseph. “We thought, since we weren’t being called for reserve duty, why don’t we work on hasbara and help in the way that we can.”

Through the hasbara efforts during the previous round with Hamas, the IDC advocacy room was able to get their message out to an estimated 21 million people around the world. The students created a Facebook page and twitter account under the now-popular “Israel Under Fire” catchphrase, through which they conducted their hasbara efforts.

“We basically picked up where we left off [after Operation Pillar of Defense],” explained Yoseph.

                […]

Currently their operations encompass activities in 31 languages in 62 countries and have so far garnered some 6,000 followers on Twitter and some 55,000 likes on Facebook. They have also opened a dedicated website available in 13 languages, with informative texts, videos, pictures, and testimonials – www.Israelunderfire.com.

One of the prominent concerns of the IDC hasbara team is combating Hamas imagery of what PM Netanyahu has called the “telegenically” dead. A reference to possible faked imagery of casualties. A team leader at the IDC student union program noted:

Tal Yaffe, an Israeli student at the IDC, explained that “the current situation forces us to fight on all fronts. Hamas doesn’t have the military capabilities to harm us, but they can harm our legitimacy in the world and also harm the motivation of the citizens of Israel.”

According to Yaffe, who is responsible for managing the website, social media has become one of the most important tools in the war effort. “When the truth is on our side and we can show that statements or images that Hamas has put out there are false, then the truth spreads faster than on any other media; and we see that what happens on social media also affects the international media,” he explained.

A Palestinian critic of the IDC student effort is Ali Abunimah of the Chicago-based Electronic Intifada. Abunimah was friend of President Obama during the latter’s period as an Illinois State Senator when he was prominently supporting the Palestinian cause. An Electronic Intifada article on the IDC student hasbarah effort was headlined, “Israel student union sets up “war room” to sell Gaza massacre on Facebook.”

Abunimah calls it “organized lying” alleging that, “the National Union of Israeli Students, of which the IDC Herzliya student union is an affiliate, has a history of working on government-funded propaganda schemes, where students are recruited as the country’s “pretty face.”

Perhaps, by Abunimah’s drawing attention to the success of the IDC social media “war room” he is ruing the lack of traction that the PA has had getting exposure in the Hamas war against Israel.

Watch this IDC student You Tube video exposing Hamas’ use of Hollywood film imagery:

The World’s First Facebook/Twitter Rally: #DefundHamas.

When Israel began Operation Protective Edge, the volunteers of the National Security Communications Task Force (NSCTF) of The Lisa Benson Radio Show came up with a brilliant idea. Why not hold the world’s first Facebook /Twitter rally on Tuesday, July 16, to tie in with a social media campaign hashtagDeFund Hamas? A website was quickly put up with the assistance of Larry Ward in Washington, DC at Political Media and blitz emails, Facebook posts and Tweets were sent. This was not an off the cuff effort, as it had first been broached two years ago in conversations between radio talk show host Lisa Benson and Texas ‘mom’ and Ann Linahan, an accomplished user and trainer in the adroit use of social media. They were searching for the right moment and cause to unleash the power of social media. The opening salvos of the rocket blitz by Hamas against targets in Israel gave them that defining moment. Linahan had been involved with several social media campaigns in Texas and nationally in opposition to adoption of the Common Core Curricula. Her email handle MsEmpower capsules the essence of why she has argued that social media works. Benson had experience as a professional fund raiser and both in Israel and Jewish community causes as a former Federation executive. Like many, Benson became more conservative especially on the matter of support for Israel, national security and immigration border security matters in her adopted state of Arizona. Benson, raised in Long Island New York had something else in her family background. Her father had been a liberator of a Nazi concentration camp in Germany late in the Second World War. Averting a second holocaust, whether triggered by a nuclear weapon from Iran or rockets from its proxies, Hezbollah in Lebanon or Hamas in Gaza was something that was foremost in her mind.

The ground work was prepared through a series of private web seminars (webnairs) conducted by Linahan with members of the NSCTF. During those webnairs, Linahan taught the techniques of using social media to push issues and gain the attention of media and influential state legislators and Members of Congress.

Linahan informed the trainees that the success of the Obama Presidential campaigns in both the 2008 and 2012. came in no small measure because the campaign team understood the power of social media. That enabled them to cultivate grass roots support especially among the Gen X millenials who relied on Facebook, Twitter and other social internet groups to communicate messages. She told her students, many of them older adults, to read the social media bible, Tribes by Seth Godin. Godin was VP for Direct Marketing at Yahoo! prior to the launch of his career as a social media guru. The subtitle of Tribes, “we need you to lead us,” is all about “leading, connecting and creating movements.” According to Godin a Tribe is:

…a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.

Tribes is the social media bible for community organizers and political operatives on the left akin to Saul Alinksy’s Rules for Radicals. Godin’s basic communication meme is behind the use of Twitter, “If you can’t state your position in eight words, you don’t have a position.” Another that Linahan frequently quotes by Godin is:

People don’t believe what you tell them. They rarely believe what you show them. They often believe what their friends tell them. They always believe what they tell themselves.

In an era where people do not read daily newspapers or have time to listen to talk radio or watch cable TV news programs. Instead they respond to the latest from their engaged minority, connected authorities, leaders on Twitter, and become followers and pushers retweeting those messages to their social networks. The connected authority in the local community are the activists conveying messaging to the local passive majority.

The NSCTF webnairs had prepared a cohort of older social media users, turning them into connected authorities and pushers anxious to try out their new social media tools defending Israel. The Lisa Benson NSCTF sent out an alert by Facebook and Twitter that a Facebook/Twitter Rally would be held between the hours of 4PM and 10PM EDT on Tuesday, July 16th. The hashtag #DefundHamas entreated Congress to hold off appropriations to a Palestinian unity government with Hamas. Those appropriations were composed of $440 million for Security and another $200 million “donation” to support the UNWRA Palestinian refugee program. A program established in 1950 that supports a network of refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. The Gaza UNWRA schools and social services facilities had alleged employed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives and have been revealed to have caches of rockets.

The cement for the virtual rally was a continuous open free conference call, the inspired suggestion of Lisa Benson. That enabled participants to suggest possible tweet messages, and target influential Members of Congress and the media personalities used variations of the basic #DefundHamas theme. Alice Linahan acted as coach throughout the 6+ hours of the open conference call giving encouragement and advice to the tyros enabling them to vault technical hurdles of scripting effective tweet messages. Lisa Benson provided news updates and suggested tactical shifts in Facebook posts and tweets. While it took several hours to build up a head of steam in the rally, by 7:00PM EDT there were over 600 people involved. They were from all across the US and despite the time differences there were Israelis and Europeans. They sent Tweets at a trended rate of over 828 per hour according to the analytics service, Scoopnest.com. Overall, the virtual NSCTF group averaged a trended production of 600 tweets an hour over the five hours. At one point Twitter blocked production because of the surge in tweeting. Look at the range of tweets and retweets sent during the #DefundHamas rally, here. Production and pushing of Tweets continued for several hours after the 10PM EDT close of the open conference call.

The NSCTF rally fought battles with Hamas supporters in Gaza who shot off retorts from their iPhones and iPads between courses of the nightly Ramadan meal. Lisa Benson commented that you knew when they had finished their evening Ramadan meals in Gaza, the rocket barrages against targets in Israel were launched, tracked by the iPhone Red Alert app.

There were some surprise responses during this hashtag battle by the NSCTF contingent. Benson got a Tweet from Al Jazeera America requesting her to call a producer at their US TV news channel for an interview. Because of several tweets directed at Senators and  Members of Congress, they had Tweets from the staff of Sen. Rand Paul, US Representatives Hunter Duncan (R-CA 50th CD) and Hal Rogers (R-KY 5th CD).

The world’s first Facebook/Twitter rally was a success on several levels. It produced a community of trained social media campaigners ably supported by a team of activist specialists led by Linahan and Benson. It was life enhancing. One woman wrote of the exhilarating experience of spending over six hours on her kitchen stool zapping tweets from Hamas and connecting with Members of Congress. Another spoke of being surrounded by her family, the children especially in awe that their parents were engaged in fighting back. The dynamic process of this social media rally has led to another that will occur on 9/11/14 which will bring together noted speakers on an open conference call interspersed with the responses by Linahan and words of encouragement from Benson.

Lots of innovation is occurring in the social media war that erupted on July 8, 2014 with Hamas rocket barrages raining down on Israel. That was dramatically heightened by the exposure of the ‘terror tunnels’ threat to Israel revealed during the IDF’s ground incursion begun on July 17th. While Israel’s IDF and Hamas’ military wing square off with graphic Tweets, videos and Facebook posts, the privateers at both the IDC in Israel and the National Security Communications Task Force team have revealed how effective the social media battle has been in communicating messaging in both current and future conflicts.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on the New English Review.

Open letter to CEO of Nextera Energy on Smart Meters

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Mr. James L. Robo
Chairman and Ceo
Nextera Energy, Inc.

Re:   Are Smart Meters Really the Intelligent Choice

Dear Mr. Robo,

Did you read where FPL spent $800,000,000.00 to buy smart meters for 4.5 million customers and is installing them at no charge along with 10,000 intelligent devices to move the information around because they say it will be a huge benefit to their customers? Now I have read over the huge customer benefits touted by FPL as being able to monitor your electric power usage even by the hour but see nothing else! Wow, that is exactly what I’m sure all people have been waiting for the ability to do. There will probably be block parties formed to watch the results and experiment with turning appliances on and off to monitor usage. I wonder how society ever survived without it and perhaps could become as big a fad as the hula hoop.

If that is true I am sure you would agree Mr. Robo that this would be the first time a company acted so benevolently towards its millions of customers and a utility no less. As I mentioned in my previous letter they are so hell bent on being benevolent to the customers they are penalizing the people staring the gift horse in the mouth though the people declining didn’t consume $1.00 of the $800 Million FPL spent.

Did you read the utility is portraying itself as a real environmentally conscious company even using Agenda 21 words like sustainability and renewable?

Did you read where they tout they have the largest wind and solar portfolio in the Country? Now that might rate a pat on the head from President Obama for battling the evil climate change hoax he is bound and determined to push as an agenda so he can soak consumers even more through eliminating evil carbon that we exhale as we breathe. It is the consumer who pays though.

Did you read where smart people are wondering how much more expensive their electricity is since the cost to produce a KW of electricity is several times higher through solar or wind than through fossil fuels? In the brochure lauding the environmental tilt of the company and patting themselves on the back about how environmentally pure they are they fail to mention an important thing; the hundreds of thousands of birds chopped up by the rotor blades and the birds killed by wings singed from the solar heat causing them to crash and die every year. I suppose they don’t want to ruin the message they are putting out and want to portray to the public since some might get upset that even bald eagles are victims of the blades yet the federal government is silent in spite of the fact there are severe penalties for killing bald eagles.

Did you read where having all of these additional portals from wind and solar farms opens up the windows available for hackers to penetrate to shut down our grid (blackout)? Even worse, the information is all of the millions of smart meters the utility installed also are a path for penetrating the system to shut it down!

So Mr, Robo, it appears the utility that is so proud of its environmental approach to providing “sustainable and renewable” energy that decimates hundreds of thousands of birds every year also is making it dramatically easier for hackers to shut down the grid because of the millions and millions of portals they can now use to penetrate the system. Do you think the utility thought of that before they acquired the largest wind and solar portfolio in the country and installed millions of electronic meters that makes us ever more vulnerable to be attacked by hackers? If that happens, what will the utility say I wonder?

Perhaps the people who refused the meters should be thanked by not increasing the number of portals any further instead of being penalized for not making the grid ever more susceptible for hackers. Would you agree those who declined the meters were really the smart people and those who chose the meter made a dumb choice?

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A New Age – The Cyber Information Age

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As you know, our firm The Sylint Group, Inc., is composed of engineers from the Intelligence Community, Department of Defense and other government agencies and have been involved with digital data communications and cyber security since the ‘70’s.  In fact the name Sylint is derived from the intelligence community jargon.  “Syl” is Greek for “with” or “together” and “int” is used with various prefixes as intelligence community descriptors such as “commint”, “humint”, etc.  Sylint is therefore bringing together the disciplines of the intelligence world into Cyber Security and Digital Data Forensics. And of course, it’s sounded like “Silent” and therefore a play on the word.

So, Sylint has a certain developed perspective on what people today are recognizing as cyber security. 

Personally, I’ve done everything from programming low orbiter satellites in assembly language as they sped by on their 450 nautical mile orbit, to intercepting digital data communications systems following terrorists across the continents.  That’s before digital data became an integral part of each person’s daily life; cell phone messaging, nanny cameras, “world news” on demand, Facebook, Twitter, digital pictures to be shared in an instant.  I remember when bleeding edge data storage was performed on a RM05, about the size of a washing machine, with a disk pack about 14” in radius, with 12 platters and 250 Mega Bytes (MB) of storage capability.  Today that equals storage for about 10 high resolution photos.  In today’s age my SD storage card, which slips into my pocket, holds 128 Giga Bytes (GB) of data.  Or, consider my digital photography SD (Secure Data) card with 32GB of storage and wireless communications capability from my camera to my tablet.  Data storage and handling has changed dramatically in the last 30 years.  But, so has the amount and types of data communicated.

We are connected to each other electronically through communications systems that we don’t understand and to people we don’t know personally, and maybe don’t know that they are connected to us.  Our lives bleed out through on-line personal accounts and everyone knows our foibles and sins. Our hard earned money is stolen from our bank accounts by somebody in a mid-eastern country, which we didn’t know existed.  And all of this is accomplished using 1’s and 0’s in a nanosecond of time from thousands of miles away.

I notice that the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is held a conference titled “Road Ahead to Cybersecurity”.  I don’t think that there is a “road ahead” for cybersecurity.  There isn’t a road at all!  The whole playing field has changed and there are no defined roads in or out.

I firmly believe that we are stuck in a quagmire alongside that “road” to the playing field and it dead ended at the entry to a new age called “the Cyber Information Age”. 

We have entered this new age, the Cyber Age, and no one realizes it.  A “new age” means that life as we know it has changed dramatically and the forces that shape the economy, world order, international boundaries, social structure, centers of military and political power, level of conflict between countries, and societies moral and ethical foundation are being driven by a new impetus and energy; something called Cyber Information.  Cyber information is different than anything that society has dealt with in the past.  Cyber information is instantaneously created, changed, modified, reformatted and retransmitted.  It’s a lie, half-truth, or fact that is immediately thrown into the world, globally, from unknown sources without vetting, modulation or consideration for its consequences.

Cyber information can be news, control software for a power grid, Programmable Logic Controllers for manufacturing, communications between First Responders, infrastructure support for large buildings, corporate intellectual property, charge card information, a city sewer system, the processor for a pacemaker.  Cyber information has created a virtual world and real world that exist side by side, interact with one another, and impact one another.

Cyber information cannot be easily secured, stopped, acknowledged, or controlled. No leadership has arisen that can formulate a means to force the direction of cyber information for the good of society.  Rather, just the opposite, forces both immoral and unethical are using cyber information for nefarious purposes because it’s a crime against society which goes unpunished and yields huge rewards.

To address Cyber Security we must first understand that we are in a new age, an age of Cyber Information and what that means for society, business and the world order.

Just a few thoughts for a Monday morning surrounded by ones and zeroes.

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Obama’s phony “anger” at Chinese cyber attacks

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It’s not anger, it’s fear.

The Obama administration is furious at China, supposedly for cyber attacks.

But China has hacked our government and businesses forever and no one ever complained. Why now?

Here is the secret no one in the MSM will mention, and it is obvious:

Russia (which the US has started a cold war with over Ukraine, even though the Kiev disturbances were made in USA and EU) just signed with China a huge deal for around $400 billion under a gas supply contract for the piping of gas to China for at least 30 years. This is designed by Russia as a stopgap measure in case Europe decides at some point to stop buying Russian gas, which is a real threat. The West sees this deal as a threat to their economy. But since signing energy contracts does not rise to the level of an act of war, a pretext had to be concocted.

The alleged cyber attacks came in handy.

But it’s worse than just a gas supply deal: China and Russia have long been planning to dedollarize (as reported in numerous sources in both the English language and foreign–including Russian–media). That means international sales would be transacted in currencies other than the dollar. A look at the shambles the Fed has created and especially a look at the QEs, i.e., the insane issuing of dollars in the trillions with no backing in noble metals, goods, services, or anything of value at all except the brand name US dollar, will help you understand why they see this as necessary. Issuing unbacked currency for any purpose other than replacement of worn out notes and coins, is like adding water to the soup when unexpected guests show up. It gets the host out of a tough spot but spoils the dinner. Guests tend to stay away next time.

Recent reports that I have seen do not state whether this gas deal that was just signed will be in a currency other than the dollar, but most likely the contract will be denominated in the yuan or the ruble.

This is the true source of the anger in Washington, but anger is hardly the right word. Call it fear.

Well, folks, the US government could have reined in the NGOs in Ukraine (including Soros’ Open Society Foundation. Don’t take my word for it. It’s proudly mentioned on Soros’ own web site!) and it didn’t have to spend $5 billion of our money (as Victoria Nuland foolishly blurted out in a meeting) on destabilizing Ukraine via USAID. Nor did it have to send the ancient lunatic John McCain (who never met a war he didn’t like) to meet with a known Nazi in what must have been a deliberate provocation of Russia, a country that lost millions of its people and millions of dollars worth of infrastructure to the Nazis. To the average Russian, there is nothing more hated than a Nazi, and with good reason. And now the US and the EU are schmoozing with Nazis in Kiev. (Please note that Russians never never never give up. Which is largely why Hitler and Bonaparte saw the bulk of their armies devoured by Russian vultures.)

No one made the US government accept the Wolfowitz doctrine of encirclement of Russia. Russia had traditional economic and diplomatic ties to every country surrounding it and there was no rational motive for trying to harm it economically as long as it was cooperating with the US, as it was. But we meddled in each one, even grooming a president for Georgia. It was deliberate provocation.

Some people believe implicitly that “war is good for the economy.” They never stop to think why they think that. This is because it has nothing to do with cognition. It is a cliché that became popular after WW II, when FDR implemented Keynesian stimulus. The war was his biggest stimulus experience, and it worked, but only because the US was industrialized, unlike today, and we had a captive market in countries whose infrastructure was destroyed and hence could not produce their own manufactured goods.

Those conditions no longer exist. And further, a group of economists at UCLA have shown that FDR’s Keynesian policies, far from stimulating, actually delayed the recovery from the depression by about 7-8 years. Yet the foolish politicians in Washington, on both sides of the aisle, believe the ‘stimulus’ myth implicitly.

But here is a pattern that has been followed by such Keynesians in the past in times of severe crisis: bailouts of business and banks, paid for by the tax payer failing that, issuance of unbacked dollars failing that, war.

What makes Keynesians so feckless is that their approach to all of these reflexive steps is wholly unscientific. When scientists test new drugs, for example, they generally propose a mechanism that would explain why the drug would most likely be efficacious. That is usually the start, before the rats get their doses of the samples. But Keynesians are not scientific. They are religious fanatics who do not question anything. No one could possibly explain a mechanism by which the standard forms of “stimulus” work because there is no logic or reason behind these elaborate Ponzi schemes. Clearly, throwing money away will not bring more money into the treasury; it will only more quickly empty it out.

It is clear that China and Russia are aware of this error, and probably the rest of the BRICS nations are as well. Yet arrogant Western powers demand that they behave as recklessly as we do. To these nations, that must be seen as provocation.

Now ask yourself: If you told your teen not to go out to the bear cave and taunt the mother bear by stealing her cubs, what would you expect to happen if he disobeyed you? And would your teen be blameless if he failed to heed your warning and got mauled or eaten?

We were at peace with the Russian bear. Now that peace is troubled. It didn’t have to be this way.

The bear has shown its claws, and they are scary. No one expected it, but then they never do expect the unexpected consequences. They think they are dealing with a circus bear and are used to it sitting up and begging.

Don’t get me wrong. We desperately need a war. But it ought to be between the political and corporatist class in the West on the one hand and We the People on the other, not between us and a scapegoat country under a narrative concocted by our keepers.

The US has lost war after war since the 50s, including the ones we ‘won.’ Will we be fooled again?

God grant us wisdom this time around.

Hacking Law and Governance with Startup Cities: How Innovation Can Fix Our Social Tech by ZACHARY CACERES

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Outside of Stockholm, vandals and vines have taken over Eastman Kodak’s massive factories. The buildings are cold metal husks, slowly falling down and surrendering to nature.  The walls are covered in colorful (and sometimes vulgar) spray paint. In the words of one graffiti artist: It’s “a Kodak moment.”

After its founding in 1888, Eastman Kodak became the uncontested champion of photography for almost a century. But in early 2012, the once $30-billion company with over 140,000 employees filed for bankruptcy.

Kodak was the victim of innovation—a process that economist Joseph Schumpeter called “the gales of creative destruction.” Kodak could dominate the market only so long as a better, stable alternative to its services didn’t exist. Once that alternative—digital photography—had been created, Kodak’s fate was sealed. The camera giant slowly lost market share to upstarts like Sony and Nikon until suddenly “everyone” needed a digital camera and Kodaks were headed to antique shows.

How does this happen? Christian Sandström, a technologist from the Ratio Institute in Sweden, argues that most major innovation follows a common path.

From Fringe Markets to the Mainstream

Disruptive technologies start in “fringe markets,” and they’re usually worse in almost every way. Early digital cameras were bulky, expensive, heavy, and made low-quality pictures. But an innovation has some advantage over the dominant technology: for digital cameras it was the convenience of avoiding film. This advantage allows the innovation to serve a niche market. A tiny group of early adopters is mostly ignored by an established firm like Kodak because the dominant technology controls the mass market.

But the new technology doesn’t remain on the fringe forever. Eventually its performance improves and suddenly it rivals the leading technology. Digital cameras already dispensed with the need to hassle with film; in time, they became capable of higher resolution than film cameras, easier to use, and cheaper. Kodak pivoted and tried to enter the digital market, but it was too late. The innovation sweeps through the market and the dominant firm drowns beneath the waves of technological change.

Disruptive innovation makes the world better by challenging monopolies like Kodak. It churns through nearly every market except for one: law and governance.

Social Technology

British common law, parliamentary democracy, the gold standard: It may seem strange to call these “technologies.” But W. Brian Arthur, a Santa Fe Institute economist and author of The Nature of Technology, suggests that they are. “Business organizations, legal systems, monetary systems, and contracts…” he writes, “… share the properties of technology.”

Technologies harness some phenomenon toward a purpose. Although we may feel that technologies should harness something physical, like electrons or radio waves, law and governance systems harness behavioral and social phenomena instead. So one might call British common law or Parliamentary democracy “social technologies.”

Innovation in “social tech” might still seem like a stretch. But people also once took Kodak’s near-total control of photography for granted (in some countries, the word for “camera” is “Kodak”). But after disruptive innovation occurs, it seems obvious that Kodak was inferior and that the change was good. Our legal and political systems, as technologies, are just as open to disruptive innovation. It’s easy to take our social techs for granted because the market for law and governance is so rarely disrupted by innovations.

To understand how we might create disruptive innovation in law and governance, we first need to find, like Nikon did to Kodak, an area where the dominant technologies can be improved.

Where Today’s Social Techs Fail

Around the world, law and governance systems fail to provide their markets with countless services. In many developing countries, most of the population lives outside the law.

Their businesses cannot be registered. Their contracts can’t be taken to court. They cannot get permission to build a house. Many live in constant fear and danger since their governance systems cannot even provide basic security. The ability to start a legal business, to build a home, to go school, to live in safe community—all of these “functions” of social technologies are missing for billions of people.

These failures of social technology create widespread poverty and violence. Businesses that succeed do so because they’re run by cronies of the powerful and are protected from competition by the legal system. The networks of cooperation necessary for economic growth cannot form in such restrictive environments. The poor cannot become entrepreneurs without legal tools. Innovations never reach the market. Dominant firms and technologies go unchallenged by upstarts.

Here’s our niche market.

If we could find a better way to provide one or some of these services (even if we couldn’t provide everything better than the dominant political system), we might find ourselves in the position of Nikon before Kodak’s collapse. We could leverage our niche market into something much bigger.

Hacking Law and Governance with Startup Cities

A growing movement around the world to build new communities offers ways to hack our current social tech. A host nation creates multiple, small jurisdictions with new, independent law and governance. Citizens are free to immigrate to any jurisdiction of their choosing. Like any new technology, these startup cities compete to provide new and better functions—in this case, to provide citizens with services they want and need.

One new zone hosting a startup city might pioneer different environmental law or tax policy. Another may offer a custom-tailored regulatory environment for finance or universities. Still another may try a new model for funding social services.

Startup cities are a powerful alternative to risky, difficult, and politically improbable national reform. Startup cities are like low-cost prototypes for new social techs. Good social techs pioneered by startup cities can be brought into the national system.

But if bad social techs lead a zone to fail, we don’t gamble the entire nation’s livelihood. People can easily exit a startup city—effectively putting the project “out of business.” If a nation chooses to use private capital for infrastructure or other services, taxpayers can be protected from getting stuck with the bill for someone’s bad idea. Startup cities also enhance the democratic voice of citizens by giving them the power of exit.

Looking at our niche market, a startup city in a developing nation could offer streamlined incorporation laws and credible courts for poor citizens who want to become entrepreneurs. Another project could focus on building safe places for commerce and homes by piloting police and security reform. In reality, many of these functions could (and should) be combined into a single startup city project.

Like any good tech startup, startup cities would be small and agile at first. They will not be able to rival many things that dominant law and governance systems provide. But as long as people are free to enter and exit, startup cities will grow and improve over time. What began as a small, unimpressive idea to serve a niche market can blossom into a paradigm shift in social technologies.

Several countries have already begun developing startup city projects, and many others are considering them. The early stages of this movement will almost certainly be as unimpressive as the bulky, toy-like early digital cameras. Farsighted nations will invest wisely in developing their own disruptive social techs, pioneered in startup cities. Other nations—probably rich and established ones—will ignore these “niche market reforms” around the developing world. And they just might end up like Kodak—outcompeted by new social techs developed in poor and desperate nations.

The hacker finds vulnerabilities in dominant technology and uses them to create something new. In a sense, all disruptive innovation is hacking, since it relies on a niche—a crack in the armor—of the reigning tech. Our law and governance systems are no different. Startup cities are disruptive innovation in social tech. Their future is just beginning, but one need only remember the fate of Kodak—that monolithic, unstoppable monopolist—to see a world of possibility.

Those interested in learning more about the growing startup cities movement should visit startupcities.org or contact startupcities@ufm.edu.

ABOUT ZACHARY CACERES

Zachary Caceres is the CIO of the Startup Cities Institute at UFM and editor of Radical Social Entrepreneurs.

Turkey’s Foolhardy Twitter Ban Backfires: @TwitterTurkey

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The municipal elections in Turkey  are less  than eight day hence.  Premier Erdogan  perpetrated a  foolhardy and heedless Twitter ban. He is  desperate to stave off a  possible last minute disclosure about more corruption revelations to  possibly be  released on Tuesday March 25.  With this ban Turkey joins a select group of countries who have similarly banned Twitter; China and Iran.  Within less than 24 hours  of announcing the ban at a campaign rally Thursday, March 20th  in Bursa, Turkey, it backfired.   According to  the website TwitTurk, more than 500,000 tweets were sent protesting the ban demonstrating how tech-savvy Turks  could work around the shutdown of Twitter.  Newsweek  reported:

According to TechCrunch, which compared Twitter activity in Turkey in the past few days, while the ban does seem to have had some negative effect on the number of tweets coming out of the country, it may have done Erdogan more harm than good in terms of global exposure. Before Thursday, there were about 200 tweets per day around the world that mentioned both “Turkey” and “Twitter.” On Friday, there were more than 80,000.

Globally, Twitter users have begun circulating a poster designed in the style of the Turkish flag but depicting Pac-Man eating Twitter’s bird logo.

President Gul, a co-founder of the AKP  with Premier Erdogan, sent a tweet objecting to the ban saying, “can’t be condoned”.  But then  Gul had signed a law  asserting the government’s control over the internet. The absurd part of Erdogan’s Twitter ban was his own party was poised to roll out  campaign  solicitations for the municipal elections  using the social  media.  The   AKP  deputy premier and Istanbul Mayor were  still using Twitter to communicate.   Lutfi Elvan (no relation to Gezi Park victim Berkin Elvan), the minister for communications , absurdly premised the Twitter ban  on a court ruling related to pornographic pictures.  The  opposition  People’s Republican Party (CHP)  leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu said the ban was hurting Turkey’s image abroad and his party would seek to overturn it.   The Turkish bar association called the ban illegal and immediately filed a criminal complaint.  Twitter had unnerved Erdogan as the social media became the source of revelations  from release of taped phone calls  to the extent of  family involvement  in money laundering, and interference with the judiciary in the swirl of corruption charges.

Erdogan’s  vain attempt at controlling social media, whether Facebook, Twitter or You Tube  might make a difference in next Sunday’s municipal elections.   His  actions denying free speech and engaging in desperate cover-ups of corruption might  unleash  a massive wave  of Turkish voters going to the polls committed  to cast votes for the opposition. That might reduce the chances of Erdogan doing a kind of ‘Putin –Medeved maneuver’ if a national referendum is passed prior to the 2015  general elections creating an executive Presidency.

Twitter Power in Turkey: the death of Berkin Elvan

The power of Twitter was evident on March 10th with the announcement by the grieving parents of  the passing  of 15 year old  Berkin Elvan using the social media  . They wrote ,” We lost our son. May he rest in peace .” Elvan  had lain in a coma  for 269 days reduced to less than 35 pounds,  after he had suffered a head injury from a tear gas canister fired by riot police during the Gezi Park protests of last June. The irony was that young  Elvan was  mortally injured on his way to purchase food for his family.  The announcement  of Elvan’s death sparked  further protests against Erdogan, as he had ordered the riot police to break up the Gezi Park sit-ins. His passing marked the sixth  death from the breakup of the Gezi  Park sit-in protests.  Those Twitter messages led to  protests by ex-pat Turkish communities organized throughout  the EU and large crowds  that swarmed  to protest rallies in Turkey.  The funeral of Elvan was attended  by thousands.   Sheikh Mohammed Fethulleh Gulen offered his condolences to the Elvan family. But nothing from Premier Erdogan who had called Gezi park protesters,  “looters”. He referred to Twitter last June as a  “ troublemaker” and in February 2014 as the “robot lobby”.

Erdogan’s  pique at Twitter was because of the corruption scandals revealed  through the social media. Bloomberg  reported :

The tweets targeted by Erdogan are primarily from two anonymous users: one going by the name of Haramzadeler, a phrase translated by Turkish media as “Sons of Thieves” though it could also mean “bastards,” and another called Bascalan or “Prime Thief,” a play on the Turkish term for prime minister.

Local media has reported that the most damaging leaks were yet to come. In a column in the Yeni Safak newspaper, Hayrettin Karaman, a retired professor of Islamic law, preemptively denied the validity of a tape he said would be aired showing him advising Erdogan on whether Islam would permit him to order the killing of politician Muhsin Yazicioglu, who died in a helicopter crash on March 25, 2009.

Twitter has become the weapon of choice seeking to topple tyranny in Turkey.  There are more than 10 million Twitter users in Turkey, a testament to the use of  social media to communicate the news. This  despite the controls imposed on both print and  other electronic media, including state TV channels.  It is the 21st Century equivalent of those computers, video recorders and fax machines sent to Poland from  the US by NGO’s. Using  secret  CIA funds  and Catholic Church support  that allowed Solidarity to  survive the declaration of the martial law regime in 1981. Those electronic devices   got ting the word out  in samizdat publications that  ultimately  defeated  the Communist government and  returned Solidarity’s legal status in 1989.

The Bursa Campaign Rally launch  of the Twitter Ban that failed

Premier Erdogan had earlier castigated  the immorality of Twitter and other social media. On Thursday at a campaign rally in Bursa he launched his failed campaign.  “We’ll dig up Twitter – all of them – from the roots,” he raged, “they’ll see the power of the Republic of Turkey”. Within a few hours of the Bursa campaign announcement the ban began in earnest when countrywide access  to Twitter  was  blocked.

The Guardian noted the immediate responses by what it termed  tech savvy Turks:

Thursday was Twitter’s eighth birthday. Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an’s birthday present to the social media giant, and to millions of Turks who use it daily, was to block the site. At about 11.20pm Thursday, those who wanted to use Twitter were greeted by a message from the Telecommunications Presidency referencing a court order that blocked access to it.

Within minutes, detailed methods of bypassing the block by changing DNS numbers and using VPNs were shared via Facebook, WhatsApp and text message. Hashtags using the Turkish for “Twitter Is Blocked in Turkey”, “Turkey Blocked Twitter” and “Dictator Erdo?an” began trending worldwide almost immediately. When the official Turkish account of Twitter tweeted, “Turkish users can send Tweets using SMS” and gave detailed instructions, Turks were already ahead of the game.

The Irish Times noted the swift action by  San Francisco-based Twitter and the resourcefulness of Turkish Twitter users:

Twitter sent out mobile numbers that allowed Turkish consumers to keep using its service. In another technical fix against the ban, Turkish downloads of Hotspot Shield, the world’s most popular virtual private network service, rose to 270,000 on Friday – from a daily average of 7,000.

The Turkish users’ defiance and the sheer scale of their activity suggest no immediate end to the battering Mr. Erdogan has suffered in cyberspace.

Adverse Comments on  Erdogan’s Twitter Ban

Yesterday afternoon, “Twitter’s @Policy account tweeted that the company was opposed to Erdogan’s ban”.  White House press spokesman Jay Carney said called, the Administration was  “deeply concerned”   about Erdogan’s Twitter ban as it undermined Turkish citizens’ “ability to exercise freedom of expression.”

The EUObserver noted these instant tweets:

The EU commissioner on digital affairs, Neelie Kroes, tweeted on Thursday (20 March) that the move “is groundless, pointless, and cowardly. Turkish people and intl [international] community will see this as censorship. It is.”

Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt, himself a prolific user of the US micro-blogging site, noted: “Erdogan is not only damaging himself, but his entire nation.”

The EU’s former ambassador to Turkey, Marc Pierini, now an analyst at the Carnegie Europe think tank in Brussels, said: “Turkey is estranging itself from the world.”

Australian  film actor Russell Crowe, appearing in the latest Bible epic, “Noah” tweeted, “Turkey has banned Twitter? That is a terrible decision. I don’t understand it?”

Now, let’s see what further revelations about Erdogan’s corruption will be Tweeted on Tuesday, March 25th.  As  a takeoff  on the radio serial program from my youth, the Shadow, might say, What evil lurks in the hearts and minds of men, only Erdogan knows, and he isn’t telling”.  But Twitter soon might.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review. The featured graphic is courtesy of Twitter.

A VERY BAD IDEA: Transferring Control of the Internet to the UN

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From an intelligence standpoint, it does not make sense to turn over control of the Internet to the UN. At a time when the US Armed Forces and the intelligence community are both trying to develop our national defenses against the threats of cyber warfare, to divest the nation of control of the Internet is not in the best interest of the nation. The Pentagon, White House, and other agencies of government have been signaling the onset of cyber warfare.

Obama’s transfer of the Internet to the UN is just another illustration of how he continues to weaken the Republic, his goal seems to move the nation to a post-modern utopian world. The Obama administration has been informing the world that Putin is on the wrong side of history, that Putin is living in the 19th Century of nationalism, not in Obama’s 21st Century vision of internationalism.

Obama believes anyone espousing nationalism in the United States is backwards, uneducated, and a danger to the “change” he envision for the United States. While Obama is degrading the strength of the US military to a level that existed before WWII, and is intent on seriously damaging the economic power of the nation, as he drives the Republic into unheard of levels of debt (soon the interest on the national debt will exceed the GNP).

Obama believes that the nation-state, and sovereignty must no longer be the basis for the foundation of the international system, in Obama’s new 21st Century world, he alleges Putin doesn’t understand, he wants to eliminate the US status as the only Superpower. It is rather apparent that Putin does understand Obama’s naive vision of the 21st Century and is taking full advantage of it, and of Obama’s leadership from behind. A destabilizing transfer of control of the Internet to the UN will not be in the best interest of the American people, the US Armed Forces, or for The Free Enterprise System. If control of the Internet is transferred to the UN, the American people can expect the UN to eventually levy taxes on use its use; the American public has been fortunate that ever since the US military created the Internet, it has been free for all Americans to use free of taxes.

Eventually the UN may allow certain restrictions to be imposed against certain member states that are not looked on favorably by the majority of member nations, like Israel, the United States, or any other nation the majority member states may disagree with. Internet privacy and computer security has always been protected by the United States, but can be abused by a new and unknown power structure at the UN.

The Republican leadership in the Congress that has done very little or nothing to oppose Obama’s transfer of the Internet to the UN, must take action to prevent the occupant of the Oval Office from effecting the transfer.

It appears Obama is transferring control of the Internet to the UN because he has had difficulty dealing with the open criticism of his administration on the Internet daily; that criticism, guaranteed by the freedom of speech, under provisions of the US Constitution has been difficult for him to accept.

It has been impossible for the Obama administration to control the American people’s freedom of expression, as they criticize the Obama administration’s multiple failures and scandals on Internet daily. Since the Internet would have to remain free and open if it were to remain under the control of the US Commerce Department, that must be changed. When the Obama administration turns control of the Internet over to the UN, he has full knowledge that a coalition of nations that restrict the freedom of expression of their own populations will endeavor to suppress the freedom of expression on the Internet.

Countries like China, Cuba, Iran, the Soviet Union, Syria, Sudan, Venezuela, Bolivia, Vietnam, Pakistan, Myanmar, Malaysia, Mozambique, Algeria, etc. will take aggressive action to change the Internet as we know it today. The American people will forced by the Obama administration to abide by new oppressive UN Internet regulations, and Americans will be forced to abide by new UN Internet restricted regulations be penalized if they do not, or even worse. The American people must be allowed to assert their freedom of expression on the Internet and their right to oppose any attempt to suppress their freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and the US Constitution, regardless of what any new UN Internet regulations may require.

The transfer of the Internet to UN control is not a small issue, it is about basic freedoms guaranteed to all Americans by the US Constitution, and must be opposed by any and all means possible. We encourage you to contact your Congressional representatives and demand that they take whatever action is required to prevent the transfer of Internet control to the UN.

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Federal Study: America’s Electrical Grid Vulnerable to Sabotage/Terrorism

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On February 9, 2014 we reported on the Wall Street Journal’s investigation into an apparent terrorist attack on the Metcalf Substation  of Pacific Gas and Electric  (PG&E) in Silicon Valley, “The Metcalf Incident: California Power Station Terrorist Attack Reveals Highly Vulnerable National Grid”.   We noted:

In the early morning of April 16, 2013, the Metcalf, California transmission substation in Silicon Valley was attacked by what federal investigators believe was a highly professional terrorist team.  That sniper assault caused 17 transformers to crash severing power to Internet Service Providers and other power users in Silicon Valley.  Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) was forced to increase and reroute power to the area served by the disabled transmission station.  Power outages were avoided.  It took 27 days for PG&E to repair and bring the transmission substation back online.

The question of the vulnerability of the national grid surfaced because of the relentless investigations conducted by the former Federal Electrical Regulatory Commission (FERC) head, Jon Wellinghoff, whose term ended November 2013.

Today’s Wall Street Journal had a follow up report on FERC simulation studies conducted  under  the sponsorship of  Wellinghoff that revealed how vulnerable the national grid could be to sabotage of less than 9 critical transformers,  “U.S. Risks National Blackout From Small-Scale Attack.”  Among the concerning revelations in the WSJ investigative report were:

The U.S. could suffer a coast-to-coast blackout if saboteurs knocked out just nine of the country’s 55,000 electric-transmission substations on a scorching summer day, according to a previously unreported federal analysis.

The study by FERC concluded that coordinated attacks in each of the nation’s three separate electric systems could cause the entire power network to collapse.

A small number of the country’s substations play an outsize role in keeping power flowing across large regions. The FERC analysis indicates that knocking out nine of those key substations could plunge the country into darkness for weeks, if not months.

With over 160,000 miles of transmission lines, the U.S. power grid is designed to handle natural and man-made disasters, as well as fluctuations in demand. How does the system work?

“This would be an event of unprecedented proportions,” said Ross Baldick, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.

Note these  comments of former FERC Chairman Wellinghoff:

The study’s results have been known for months by people at federal agencies, Congress and the White House, who were briefed by then-FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff and others at the commission. As reported by the Journal last month, Mr. Wellinghoff was concerned about a shooting attack on a California substation last April, which he said could be a dress rehearsal for additional assaults.

“There are probably less than 100 critical high voltage substations on our grid in this country that need to be protected from a physical attack,” he said by email this week. “It is neither a monumental task, nor is it an inordinate sum of money that would be required to do so.” Mr. Wellinghoff left FERC in November and is a partner at law firm Stoel Rives LLP in San Francisco.

FERC has given the industry until early June to propose new standards for the security of critical facilities, such as substations.

This latest WSJ report on the vulnerability of the national electrical grid noted in conclusion:

While the prospect of a nationwide blackout because of sabotage might seem remote, small equipment failures have led to widespread power outages. In September 2011, for example, a failed transmission line in Arizona set off a chain reaction that created an outage affecting millions of people in the state and Southern California.

Sabotage could wreak worse havoc, experts said.

“The power grid, built over many decades in a benign environment, now faces a range of threats it was never designed to survive,” said Paul Stockton, a former assistant secretary of defense and president of risk-assessment firm Cloud Peak Analytics. “That’s got to be the focus going forward.”

Watch this Wall Street Journal video  interview with National War College Professor Dr. Richard Andress:

In our February 2014   Iconoclast post  we cited the vulnerability of critical   transformer substations throughout the national grid, the lack of sufficient replacement manufacturing capacity in the US and the dependence on foreign manufacturers in China,  South Korea and Germnay.That more than 100 military bases were supplied by the civilian electrical grid.  We also revealed the differing attitudes of leading electrical industry groups and Congressional lassitude on the matter of passing enabling legislation. We said:

The  North American Electric Reliability  Corporation (NERC), the principal electric utility standard setting organization,  has opposed passage of the Shield Act calling the network “resilient”.  Au contraire  says  an official of Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) cited by the WSJ: “The breadth and depth of the attack was unprecedented” in the U.S., said Rich Lordan, senior technical  executive. “The motivation”, he said, “appears to  be preparation for an act of war.”  When we checked the websites of House Energy and Commerce Committee  Chairman  Fred Upton (R-MI ) and  Energy and Power Subcommittee Chairman Ed Whitfield (R-KY) their major concerns as regards the security of the grid is vulnerability to cyber attack.  According to the WSJ  retiring  House Energy and Commerce Ranking Member Henry Waxman (D-CA) raised concerns  about the lack of federal  authority to undertake protective actions regarding the safety of the national grid during FERC oversight hearings in December 2013.

The revelations of this follow up WSJ report buttress the conclusions of our earlier post:

Whether it is  a terrorist attack like the Metcalf substation incident, the threat of a massive geomagnetic storm during  an EMP caused by either North Korea or Iran , this latest WSJ report should embolden US taxpayers and electrical users to request serious  Congressional  consideration of HR 2417: The Shield Act .   If any of those events occurred  that would  bring us back to pre-industrial times. The estimates are that more than 200 million Americans could succumb to a  pandemic  virus from lack of food, water, sanitation  and  medical treatment caused by the breakdown of industrial , transportation and communications networks.

If you are concerned about this lack of security of the national  grid, you should consider signing  the Protect The US Grid  petition requesting Congressional consideration of the Shield Act, here.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review.